Your organization’s board of directors may be affable, effective, challenging, or down-right difficult. But love it or not, the board has a role to play in grants administration. The board’s responsibility to oversee the financial and legal operations of your nonprofit place it at the epicenter of post-award management, but the board also has a role on the pre-award side. Here are some typical ways that boards participate in securing grants.
Really, you’re not. It’s an old notion that was never right in the first place. To continue to move the field forward, let’s make sure our professional language evolves along with our skills and understanding.
The strain of inadequate, insecure funding is exhausting and often sends nonprofits tilting at every windmill that might throw out a grant dollar. Every organization has its own pressure points and problems, but there are some commonalities throughout the sector.
Nonprofits are dedicated to their missions, pouring every ounce of time, energy, and money they can muster into their fight to make positive change.
CLASSIC ARTICLES - Your agency submits a grant proposal to a longtime funder and the program officer responds with high praise. There's just one hitch-she also wants you to redefine your mission. What's a board to do? Three experts offer their own advice.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - As a program officer with the Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Joel Orosz dispensed frank advice along with grants.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Every group has a mission, but how do you distill that mission down to a single, concise paragraph? Communications expert Janel M. Radtke has some answers. She also gives several illustrations of mission statements that work.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - Recruiting good board members is a persistent challenge for community-based organizations. Grantsmanship Center trainer Judy Gooch suggests a dozen places to start looking for prospective members.
CLASSIC ARTICLE - With new technology, nonprofits are able to connect with their constituents much more effectively. But when a development office relies on poorly configured equipment and inconsistent databases, more money is spent and less money comes in.
